Chapter 12: Were the teachings of the apostles deliberately altered? If Christianity changed radically within a few decades after the Apostle John's death, it wasn't because the Church misunderstood the apostles' teachings. After all, if the very men who were personally taught by the apostles couldn't understand them, how can anyone hope to understand the apostles? No, any dramatic departure from apostolic Christianity by the early Christians would have been deliberate.
Our first subheading: They believed there was no new special revelation. Did the early Christians think the apostles were in error on some matters? Did they believe the Church had new revelation after the apostles, or that some apostolic teaching was outdated? The answer to these questions is an unequivocal no. The early Church specifically taught that there was no special doctrinal revelation beyond the apostles, and that everything we need to know about God had been revealed to the apostles.
Further, the Church believed that the apostles taught nothing in error, and that their teachings applied to Christians in all ages. For example, Tertullian wrote, "In the Lord's apostles we possess our authority." Even they did not of themselves choose to introduce anything new, but they faithfully delivered to the nations of mankind the doctrine they had received from Christ. If therefore even an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel, we would call him accursed.
We therefore draw up this rule: Since the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach, no others should be received as preachers, that is, as of original doctrine, than those whom Christ appointed. The Son did not reveal his Father to any other than the apostles, whom he sent forth to preach these things he revealed to them." In fact, the primary confrontation between the early Church and the early heretical groups was over the issue of revelation.
Nearly all the heretics claimed to have new revelation beyond the teachings of the apostles. Irenaeus the pupil of Polycarp said this on behalf of the Church, "The Lord of all gave to his apostles the power of the gospel, through whom we have known the truth.
It is unlawful to claim that the apostles preached before they possessed perfect knowledge, as some Gnostics venture to say, boasting themselves as improvers of the apostles." The early Church was unwavering in its position that there was no special revelation after the apostles. Therefore, the Church summarily rejected any teaching or doctrine that hadn't been heard from the lips of the apostles.
But of course, simply because the early Christians said there was no revelation after the apostles doesn't prove they weren't wickedly altering the apostles' teaching anyway. What about their integrity? Let's look into that. Were the early Christian leaders principled men of God, or were they unscrupulous seekers of wealth and power? Well, the overwhelming evidence is that they were humble, honest men of God. For one thing, the early Christian leaders didn't profit materially from their positions.
As I've already discussed, early Church leaders were not paid a salary. Serving as a presbyter in the early Church usually meant giving up material comforts to live in poverty. Only the heretics profited financially from their positions of leadership. There was little to attract a person to Church leadership other than an honest desire to serve God. Moreover, during times of persecution, Church leaders were specially targeted by soldiers and mobs.
In some periods of time in these first few centuries, being appointed as an overseer was tantamount to receiving a death sentence. Yet, almost without exception, the leaders of the early Church willingly endured inhuman tortures rather than to deny Christ. A substantial number of the Christian leaders cited in this book—Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Methodius, and Origen—willingly died for their faith in Christ.
If these men had been dishonestly twisting the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, would they have been willing to die for Jesus? The Gnostics certainly were not. Although the Gnostics claimed to have special revelation from God, they were all too ready to deny Jesus when faced with torture and death. Few people will die for something they know is a deliberate lie. Don't we point out this very fact when defending the truthfulness of Jesus' resurrection?
Don't we argue that the apostles wouldn't have willingly died for what they knew was a lie? Would the pupils of the apostles have done any differently? Our next subheading: They assembled and preserved our New Testament. Actually, the authenticity of the New Testament itself is intertwined with the integrity of the early Christians. After all, it was the early Church leaders who collected, preserved, and tested the genuineness of the writings we now call the New Testament.
Some Christians have the mistaken impression that at the close of the apostolic age, the apostles handed the Church a bound collection of writings called the New Testament, telling the Church that everything it needed to know was contained in those writings. But that's not what happened at all. The various letters and narrative accounts written by the apostles and their disciples were actually collected separately by early Christian congregations around the Roman world.
The apostles never told the Church which writings to accept and which to reject. Rather, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the early Christians had to decide for themselves which writings were genuinely from the apostles and which were not, which was no easy task. For one thing, numerous spurious gospels and apostolic letters were circulating in those days. In fact, there were more fake accounts of the life of Jesus and the acts of the apostles than there were genuine ones.
Have you ever heard of the Gospel of Thomas? What about the Gospel of Nicodemus? Or today I could say the Gospel of Judas? What about the Acts of Philip or the Acts of Andrew and Matthias? Have you ever read the Revelation of Paul? Well, probably not. The reason is that the early Church did not accept those writings as genuine. So if the Church had wanted to depart from the teachings of the apostles, all it had to do was to accept some of those spurious writings and reject some of the genuine apostolic writings.
Or the Church could have simply altered the genuine apostolic writings to make them fit the teachings of the Church. Nobody would have called the Church's hand on this since everybody else outside the Church was already doing this very thing. So this leaves us between a rock and a hard place. If we say that the early Christian leaders were dishonest men who deliberately altered the teachings of the apostles, we have to admit the likelihood that they would have also dishonestly altered their writings.
In fact, when we defend the veracity and authenticity of the New Testament writings to skeptics, we invariably cite the use and testimony of the early Christians as one of our main bases of authority. The integrity of these men is particularly noticeable in their decisions on which books to include in the New Testament canon.
For example, knowing the early Christian doctrine of salvation and works, we would naturally expect to find that the early Church placed great emphasis on the letter of James and accepted its canonicity without question, while resisting the letter to the Romans. But just the opposite is true. The early Christians rarely quoted from James, and many churches questioned its authenticity. In contrast, they quoted abundantly from Paul, and they included his letters in the New Testament canon without hesitation.
What incredible integrity! They questioned the authenticity of the very book that most strongly supported their doctrinal beliefs on salvation. At the same time, they accepted without hesitation those books that might be interpreted as contradicting their beliefs. Would we have such integrity? I don't see this type of integrity in the man from whom so many of our evangelical doctrines stem, that is, Martin Luther. One of Luther's noteworthy accomplishments was his translation of the Bible into German.
But his translation contained prefaces to each Bible book that steered the reader's attention away from parts of the Bible that didn't fit Luther's theology. For example, in his preface to the New Testament, Luther wrote this: "It would be right and proper that this book should appear without preface and without any other name than that of its authors, and convey only its own name in its own language.
But many wild interpretations and prefaces have driven the thought of Christians to a point where no one any longer knows what is gospel or law, Old Testament or new.
Necessity demands, therefore, that it should have an announcement or preface by which the simple man can be brought back from the old notions to the right road, and be taught what he is to expect in this book, so that he may not seek laws and commandments where he ought to be seeking the gospel and God's promises." He continues: "If I had to do without one or the other, either the works or preaching of Christ, I would rather do without his works than his preaching.
For the works do not help me, but his words give life, as he himself says." Now, John writes very little about the works of Christ, but very much about his preaching. But the other evangelists write much of his works and little of his preaching. Therefore, John's gospel is the one, tender, true chief gospel, far, far to be preferred to the other three and placed high above them. So too, the epistles of Saint Paul and Saint Peter far surpass the other three gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
He continues: "In a word, Saint John's gospel and his first epistle, Saint Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and Saint Peter's first epistle, are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and good for you to know, even though you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine.
Therefore, Saint James' epistle is really an epistle of straw compared to them, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it." Now, Luther claimed that the only reason he preferred the gospel of John over the other three gospels was that it contained more of Jesus' preaching. But that simply isn't true. The gospel of Matthew contains nearly twice as much of Jesus' preaching as the gospel of John. A person doesn't need to be very perceptive to see what Luther's real motive was.
The Bible books Luther disparaged happen to be the very books that indicate that obedience is necessary for salvation. For example, in Matthew, we find such sayings as: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven." It's Matthew 7:21. And: "He who endures to the end will be saved." Matthew 24:13. James tells us that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. It's James 2:24.
Luther was willing to stoop to disparaging the very word of God just to advance his own theology. It is no wonder then that most of modern liberal theology began in Lutheran seminaries. In short, I see a sharp contrast between the integrity of the early Christians and that of the founder of the Reformation. How much confidence could we have in the New Testament canon if it had been compiled by Luther rather than by the early churches?
At the same time, how much confidence can we have in our evangelical doctrines that came from Luther? The early Christians were ultra-conservative, equating change with error. Since they expected no new revelation after the apostles, they summarily rejected any new teachings that had not come from the apostles.
For example, one early congregation made the following comment in a letter to another congregation, saying: "You well understand, no doubt, that those who seek to set up any new doctrines have the habit of very readily perverting any proofs they desire to take from the scriptures to conform to their own notions.
Consequently, a disciple of Christ ought to receive nothing new as doctrine that is in addition to what has been once committed to us by the apostles." When change is equated with error, things do not change very quickly. A comparison of the writings of the second-century church with those of the third-century church demonstrates that there were very few changes in doctrines or moral precepts between those two centuries.
To be sure, there were some changes between the second and third centuries, but these related primarily to church government and discipline. Our next heading: They consulted the disciples of the apostles. Another thing that impressed me about the early Christian leaders was their sincere desire to avoid accidentally straying from the practice of the apostles. As I've mentioned, the first-century churches clung to the oral tradition of the apostles, and they consulted with the apostles when questions arose.
If the apostles weren't available, they consulted with leaders in those churches where some of the apostles had personally taught. This latter practice continued up until the time of Constantine. For example, Irenaeus wrote: "Suppose a dispute arises relative to some important question among us.
Should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with whom the apostles had constant dealings and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to that question?" Remember, as late as AD 150, there were still elders in the church who had been personally taught by one or more apostles. Through the close of the second century, there were still church leaders who had been taught by one or more personal disciples of the apostles.
Of course, consulting with apostolically founded churches was not as good as talking with the apostles themselves. But considering the ultra-conservative spirit of the early church, this was a valid method to keep from straying too far from the practices and teachings of the apostles. You should know that this practice was entirely voluntary. No church had ecclesiastical authority over other churches.
Also, remember that the rationale for this practice was not that the apostolic churches had any present authority or revelation from God, but that they had the best link to past revelation. Our next subheading: They all taught the same basic doctrines. As I've previously mentioned, early Christianity was marked by a diversity of thought on the finer points of doctrine.
At the same time, most of the basic beliefs and practices, including the ones discussed in this book, were nearly universally taught throughout the early church. This universality of basic beliefs convinces me that these beliefs must have come from the apostles. That's because there was no second-century Christian of church-wide influence who could have originated these doctrines.
In fact, Tertullian pointed this out to the Gnostics and other heretics who claimed that the church wasn't correctly teaching the doctrines of the apostles. Tertullian's defense to this charge might just as well be addressed to Christians today.
He said: "It is absurd to claim that the apostles either were ignorant of the whole scope of the message they were given to declare, or that they failed to teach the entire rule of faith." Let us see if perhaps the churches, through their own fault, altered the faith delivered to them by the apostles. Suppose then that all of the churches have erred and that the Holy Spirit did not have enough concern for even one church to lead it into truth, even though that is the reason Christ sent him to us.
Suppose too that the Holy Spirit, the steward of God and vicar of Christ, neglected his office and permitted the churches to understand incorrectly and to teach differently than what he himself was teaching through the apostles. If that is the case, is it likely that so many churches would have gone astray and all still ended up with one and the same faith? No random deviation by so many people could result in all of them coming to the same conclusion.
If the churches had fallen into doctrinal errors, they would have certainly ended up with varying teachings. However, when that which was deposited, he's meaning the Christian faith, among many is still found to be one and the same, it is not the result of error, but of long-established custom. I find it rather difficult to circumvent Tertullian's argument. If the churches had departed from the one true faith preached by the apostles, how did they all end up teaching the same thing?
There were no church-wide councils during that period. There were no seminaries, no printed literature, or any other means to quickly disseminate erroneous teachings throughout the church. So how could all the congregations have independently come up with the same interpretations and practices unless they were simply following what Paul and the other apostles had taught as they visited the congregations during their travels?
In fact, even 300 years after the death of Jesus, Orthodox Christians were still one united body. In contrast, 300 years after the Reformation, Protestant or evangelical Christians were divided into hundreds of dissenting groups and sects. Shouldn't this tell us something? A friend who heard I was studying the early Christian writings made the following comment to me in a letter. He said: "I have a theory.
The way to determine the authenticity of those who are regarded as church fathers is to compare their ideas and way of life with those reflected in the life of Jesus and his disciples." I realized when I received that letter that, of course, he was right. It would be difficult to maintain that the early Christians were upholding apostolic teachings if their practices and lifestyle contradicted the very things that Jesus and his apostles taught.
But as we've already seen, the early Christians lived very literally by the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Their lives reflected their loyalty to Jesus. Our final subheading: What did Jesus say about their doctrines? Finally, and most importantly, we have the direct testimony of Jesus himself. At the close of the first century, he evaluated seven representative churches and gave his analysis of them in the Revelation to John.
Only a few years separated the Book of Revelation from the earliest writings I've discussed in this book, such as the letters of Ignatius and Clement of Rome, or writings like the Didache. So in the Book of Revelation, what did Jesus have to say to those seven representative churches? Did he reprimand them for teaching false doctrines? Did he rebuke them for believing that works play a role in salvation? No, it was just the opposite. He exhorted them to increase their works.
He told the church in Sardis that their works were not complete, but he said nothing to any of them about their theological beliefs. In fact, he encouraged a couple of the churches to hold firmly to what they had. His primary criticism to several of the churches was that they tolerated idolatry and immorality, a problem that was remedied by the second-century church.
He condemned those churches that accepted the Nicolaitans, and the doctrine or teaching of the Nicolaitans involved sexual immorality and eating things sacrificed to idols. It did not involve theological doctrines. No, there is nothing in Jesus' messages to indicate that any of the seven churches were teaching false theology. In fact, as I've mentioned before, Jesus had no rebuke whatsoever for the church in Smyrna, where Polycarp was apparently the overseer or bishop.
What better stamp of approval could a church possibly have that its teachings and practices were pleasing to God? But if the early Christians didn't change the teachings of the apostles, who did?